Pros:Amazing price for high-end components. nVidia GeForce 6800 Ultra card pushes gaming performance to new heights. Bright and responsive 20.1-inch Viewsonic LCD. Far Cry game and zboard gaming keyboard are welcome bonuses.Cons:Some may find the green X-Blade chassis too flashy. Side intake fan and the CPU heatsink fan are loud.Bottom Line:Clearly going after the same market of well-heeled gaming enthusiasts that Alienware, VoodooPC, and Falcon Northwest are courting, Cyberpower has proven itself a very good contender with the Gamer Ultra 9900 Pro. This amazingly priced system is worth every dollar, and Cyberpower even has budget-priced systems, proving they're ready to compete across the board.

With a flashy green X-Blade case, AMD Athlon 64 FX-53 CPU, gorgeous 20.1-inch Viewsonic LCD display, and the new nVidia GeForce 6800 Ultra GPU, the Cyberpower Gamer Ultra 9900 Pro is a drool-worthy high-end gamer box. Even better, it's priced a couple grand less than similarly configured boutique PCs (though you won't get a custom case and a few other perks).

The Athlon FX-53 chip, helped along by 1GB of 400-MHz DDR SDRAM and two 74GB, 10,000-rpm SATA drives in a RAID Level 0 configuration, delivered solid performance on our Winstone tests. But gaming tests are where this system excelled, thanks to the nVidia GeForce 6800 Ultra. The 9900 Pro's 3DMark03 scores were extremely high, and it achieved greater than 150 frames per second on the Serious Sam test at both resolutions we tested. Its 86-fps and 72-fps Splinter Cell scores significantly outpaced those of a recent gaming box from Overdrive PC that has an overclocked ATI Radeon 9800 XT graphics card. The next generation of 3D graphics is clearly here, and it is blazing new trails.

The case fans (each with a glowing blue LED) work to keep the X-Blade case cool. Airflow is aided by a neat inside assembly, with wires and cables well routed and tied downincluding the dual power cables leading to the GeForce 6800 Ultra card. One thing that had us scratching our heads, however, is Cyberpower's choice of both quiet and noisy components. The Ultra 9900 has a Thermaltake 480W Silent Purepower power supply and a 120-mm exhaust fan, which we like because larger fans can expel the same amount of air as an 80-mm fan while turning slower, leading to quieter operation. The problem is that the CPU fan is the standard (read: loud) type. Combine that with the 80-mm intake fan on the windowed side of the case, and you have a PC whir that can be heard from a few feet away. But though the fan noise may be audible during more quiet tasks like burning DVDs on the DVD+/-RW drive, you certainly won't notice it when the Creative Labs Inspire 7700 7.1 speakers are sonically recreating a game world in your room.

Clearly going after the same market of well-heeled gaming enthusiasts that Alienware, VoodooPC, and Falcon Northwest are courting, Cyberpower has proven itself a very good contender with the Gamer Ultra 9900 Pro. This amazingly priced system is worth every dollar, and Cyberpower even has budget-priced systems, proving they're ready to compete across the board. We'll keep our eyes out for future systems from this promising builder.

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